How to stop negative, self destructive thinking patterns?

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I go through periods of time where I feel so badly about myself that I wish that I didn't exist. I know I can't commit suicide because i had a young cousin who committed suicide and having two kids from the same generation do it would be a major tragedy for my family...but in the mean time, while waiting for it to happen naturally, what do I do about the deep feelings of isolation and the sadness and shame in myself that causes me to hurt other people and whatnot?

Me too, but well, you've got to survive, there's no choice. My mantra is that I had so many chances to stop it in the past, stopping it now would have made all the time I spent since the first of such thoughts be a waste...

I enjoyed reading this book -
Hello, cruel world : 101 alternatives to suicide for teens, freaks, and other outlaws

I do like reading some self help and acceptance articles, particularly what my FB friend, Mr Bollard writes -
http://life-with-aspergers.blogspot.com ... rgers.html

But what helps me the most is eating properly, I find when I don't get enough iron, it won't show up on pathology tests as being anaemic, but I find it really affects my anxiety and depression levels. So getting nutrients from all food groups helped me. I did try the SAMe supplement too, which was helpful, but important not to take too much of.

That, sleep and exercise, and chocolate.

If I do freak out about things, I have a good friend to talk to, and he lets me email him, if I can't talk to him.

Sometimes with being an Aspie it is good to hide away for a few days.

I don't know as I've got older I find it easier to know what to do, given low moods.

ooh and B Vitamins are good too, for your brain.

Hey there;

Sorry.


Oohhhh boy, you do know how to ask the great questions.
The ones where the great answers ain't coming from the drive-through window.

Since it is a "go through periods of time" thing, the first struggle is hanging on long enough to get through that period. No real news there, that's the obvious part.

emc2 makes excellent points about nutrition - that often becomes the first casualty of low times.

Give us some time to think about it and look for stuff.

http://www.aspergermanagement.com/piety ... self-doubt

When I get stressed out or overwhelmed, I often repeat negative mantras to myself, such as "you freak," "worthless bastard, "you should die." I often think about death and dying, sometimes every day, but two things shop: the fear that I could go through the motions and still not die, but rather be worse off" and remembrance of my Catholic upbringing where it is a mortal sin to take your own. A mortal sin is one which leads to eternal death in hell should you fail to confess it before dying. I often entirely worthless, like I haven't experienced anything with my life in the eyes of the world. Then I remember how little cherish the opinions of the world. It is at these times that I seek transcendence and meaning by pursuing my special interests heart and soul to the exclusion of the world so that their findings can somehow ultimately contribute in some small way to the betterment of the world.
Sincerely,
Rich

I usually can't sleep at night..... so out of boredom and just unhelpful reflection..... it's easy for me to get to this point at night. I never consider committing suicide...... but I do kind of get apathetic about my existence.... like I kind of get an attitude of "if I die tonight, I won't care". Being an auspie has taught me that we are made for relationship and purpose....... and to be blocked from that because of what you deal with, and all around feeling like it's your own fault? That can get pretty rough. I confort myself by saying that these battles have made me a strong person..... but in the large scoop of things..... it's not very conforting.

A gluten-free diet. Over and over again I have discovered that if I relax on the gf I find myself sinking into black-holes of depression.

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I have experienced those times, and I've come to the conclusion that people aren't supposed to seek happiness necessarily. That belief seems to be a product of modern culture and religion. Maybe it's even been intensified as a goal by consumerism -- buy this and you'll be happy. Yeah, right.

Life is messy, and it's as much destruction as construction, as much compost as creativity, as much darkness as sunlight. It's also lonely -- for everyone. I don't think, even with NT abilities to understand others better than some non-NTs, that anyone feels fully understood and loved for themselves, and if they do, surely not 100% of the time. Such a lack of difficulty or doubt would make me question why we're here. I mean, why bother if there's nothing to learn, no conflict, no questions to answer? I think we're here to experience some of the more difficult aspects of physical life, of separation, of negativity, self-doubt, and so forth.

It could be that you're in fact living life more fully than someone who is happy all the time. And the older I get the more I realize that life is short enough as it is without wanting to end it prematurely.

It does not matter how worthwhile others perceive you as being if you cannot access such feelings within yourself.

You do not strike me as a generally judgemental person, so I suspect you are making a special exception of yourself, judging you much more harshly than you would judge someone who is not you. One counter measure then is to consider the issue you are "down on yourself" about and imagine how you would feel and react if someone other than you were in your situation. I suspect you would respond with sympathy and compassion to someone who is not you, so imaging someone else and considering how you would respond to them might allow you to access and apply compassion and understanding to yourself.

Cut yourself a break every now and then. Remember you've been dealt a challenging hand and keep in mind the aspects of yourself that are truly commendable. Not everyone experiencing the suffering you describe would think of how their actions might impact on others. Your cousin was probably a decent worthwhile person, but they acted more selfishly than you when they ignored or chose not to consider the effect of their action on their family. You have many positive attributes and I think if you knew someone just like you, you'd probably like them and think well of them.

I think it's important to try and recognise the negative thoughts as they happen, and to see them as "don't go there" territory. It sounds like a cliche but I think it's good to replace the negative thoughts with more positive ones. Usually when I start thinking "I'm evil" or "I'm ineffective," it's not hard to see that the thinking is very narrow....sure I've sometimes harmed others and failed to achieve what I'd like to achieve, but who hasn't? And it's not all that hard to find examples of the opposite, if I care to look for them. I've made people happy too, and I've achieved some of my goals.

Could it be a problem of failing to be assertive and (moderately) aggressive when dealing with others? I've heard it said that a lot of suicidal ideas come from that - the mind fails to shove back against the cruel world, and turns the anger on itself because there's nowhere else for it to go. Just a theory.

I don't get suicidally depressed.....actually I have a hard time knowing what depression is....I have times when I just don't seem able to do anything constructive at all, though there's no obvious reason for it. Then I feel bad at myself for letting myself down, which tends to make me even worse. I just stay apathetic for days until some interesting challenge or aspiration comes along that has the power to get me off my butt.

There's no objective answer to the question "Am I OK as a person?" I think it's the one area of thought in which I have no choice to apply an act of faith......the answer has to be "yes."

Good luck with trying to cope with it. I hope you don't let it get the better of you. It would be a hell of a waste if you topped yourself, especially as you're still so young.

I think I have had trouble consciously acknowledging that I have been depressed...the sadness I feel feels too linked to reality for me to acknowledge that it has more to do with wonky brain chemicals.
I am having trouble dealing with the stress..and the holidays don't help..and I have not been getting enough sunlight or exercise...and everything around me seems sorta dim...and then I keep having little meltdowns...almost every day...I keep telling my partner/boss to fire me if he does not like dealing with my freakouts...(but he can't because I own the company)..and i question his logic in insisting on keeping such a negative and ineffective person as myself around...
I will hoist myself out of it eventually....I always do..I reckon...

I've had that thing about strong negative feelings seeming too "realistic" to be seen for what they are. Recognising them as an over-reaction is a great help......it's like being very drunk and going through the melancholy stage, if you know what's happening then it somehow takes the sting out of it, because you know it's chemically-induced and will pass in time. Strong feelings also have a habit of seeming perpetual even though they aren't, at least in my experience. I also have a hard time knowing exactly what depression is, and what signs I need to watch out for.

Interesting how you handle the others around you - sounds like your defense is to cave in and say "I don't see myself getting any better so you may as well take me out and shoot me." I guess one sign of depression is that loss of hope.

Those meltdowns must drain a lot of energy from you.

I don't know if your "thing" about darkness is the same as mine or not.....I can still remember nightmares about being at school when I was about 6 years old. I'd be unable to hear what the teachers were saying because of the reverberation of the unfurnished hall we were in, and could hardly see because of the weak light - used to scare me a lot, and I can still get quite freaked out by bad lighting. It's been said that bad light can be a contributory factor for depression, so it might help to get under the sun for a while.

I know...I need to make a concerted effort to get more sunlight...For the last two years I have been living in this giant warehouse with no windows, and it is lit with those compact flourescent bulbs...
I have intended to, but have not made it routine for me to go outside lately....Right now the weather is kinda bad...damp and overcast..and the air is bad...we are downwind of a commercial coffee factory so there is the sickly burnt coffee grime in the air...especially when the air is damp..I tend to fall into a pattern of inertia and get bogged down in my nonproductive routines and the struggles with the daily attempts at organizing the perpetual chaos and doing the chores and running my internet business...

I need to make a concerted effort to get out on my bike every day...and then my good friend always goes and sits in the back yard with a guitar and/or book whenever he is here...it is just that easy to go outside...my back yard is like a spartan little park...and he encourages me (to the point of reprimand) to get more exercise...but I have to make a routine of it..and sometimes it is hard to start new routines...especially when I feel mentally bogged down...

But yeah...I can definitely relate to hating the bad flickery lighting in school and the not being able to hear the teacher because I was too distracted by the noises and stuff....horrible to be subjected to that in a structured environment....I have bad lighting and bad air and bad sounds (constant traffic and trains passing and the wind banging our big metal door)...but otherwise my environment is largely unstructured...and while things can be very tedious and it can be very difficult for me to regiment myself and/or focus on anything, there is really no one to reprimand me but myself...

My partner copes with it by staying in bed...he stays glued to his laptop for most of the day doing his computer work from bed....i need to get out of the cycle of spending so much time on the computer, but I am stuck in a routine that the computer is a large part of...

As far as my "take me out and shoot me" mentality....I don't really know what to say...I deal with a lot of tedium and frustration...and I have issues....

OK, so that's 2 possible ways of easing the problems - working on the environment, and working on the issues. If your issues are anything like mine (i.e. complicated), the environment might be the best place to start. I'd definitely go for the cycling option.....strangely enough my bike fell apart a few weeks ago, I was thrown over the handlebars and broke a couple of teeth. The dentist did a good job of fixing them, but during the inspection he noticed an old wisdom tooth that needed to come out. Long story short, I went through so much anxiety and pain that I still haven't got myself a new bike, even though I'm fully recovered physically - I know I should, but I just keep putting it off. So I know what it's like to see a thing as a good idea yet feel unable to do it.

Anyway, with a bit of luck you'll be cycling again soon and so will I. As your local environment has all these problems with light, air and sound, you'd be able to escape them for a while at least. As you say, it'd be a new routine so it'd be hard to make a start on it, but it's well worth a try.

I'm no stranger to light problems......the house I live in doesn't get enough daylight because the buildings here are very densely packed together, and everybody's had kitchen extensions added to their houses, so now the sun doesn't get much of a chance and I have to keep the lights on even at noon in July. I get round it by using a huge tungsten lightbulb with a dimmer switch (otherwise it's too bright for the evenings), but it's not quite the same as real daylight. If I ever pluck up the courage to redecorate, I think I might go for brilliant white, but it'll show up all the dirt.

One of the things I took to heart from all the yoga books I used to read, was that they tend to work by first strengthening the body, which leads to a strengthening of the mind, and only then do they start looking at issues, when the mind has recovered enough to see itself more clearly.

Same here. I'm by far my biggest critic, but I don't follow my own advice very often. Self-motivation can be really difficult, but not impossible, and I get a good feeling when I've actually obeyed myself. For the past few weeks I've been doing almost nothing but the essentials like taking the trash out and fixing the toilet cistern, so I'm quite annoyed with myself for being so lethargic, but I get a nice buzz from seeing the results of the little bit of work that I do.....it hasn't lifted me back into habitual activity yet, I still keep dropping back into apathy, but I'm sure those few simple tasks are keeping me from total collapse, even though when I start them I feel lousy.

Anyway, I hope you start feeling better soon. If nothing else happens, these low phases tend to get better on their own - at least mine do - but if you can give them a little help then that might accelerate the process and blow off the cobwebs.

just saying what works for me .. right now .. right this second.

i lie down in darkness or low light .. listening to nice warm music .. not too loud and not too soft .. right now "Beginner's Guide to Banghra" works for me, for some reason.

also .. a few weeks ago an image appeared to me. it was a baby monkey. i think maybe a post card i have on the fridge door inspired me:



somehow seeing that cute and very defenseless baby monkey helps me a lot! maybe helps me feel sympathy for myself .. i imagine i try to take good care of the baby monkey. make him feel safe and loved. happy and playful. exploring and alive.

this works for me .. lying there in near darkness immersed in warm rythms .. daring to try to face the pain and sadness .. in my experience facing the pain will make it grow weaker or even go away. but maybe that's because of the decades of therapy i've done .. my expereince is facing the pain and processing it will release me. seeing the baby monkey makes me warm to myself, i think. feel tenderness towards my own shortcomings ...